Eleven

Peacemaker

‘And high above, depicted in a tower,

Sat Conquest, robed in majesty and power,

Under a sword that swung above his head,

Sharp-edged and hanging by a subtle thread’.

Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

Westminster Hall was undergoing elaborate redevelopment. Along with a new delicately carved roof, a new floor and wide, fashionable windows, Richard II commissioned thirteen statues of the formidable line of Kings that came before him: from Edward the Confessor to Richard himself. The deceased monarchs’ likenesses were chiselled carefully from the finest Reigate stone and were ensconced along the south wall. Their crowns were gilded with the finest shining gold leaf, and red and green robes flowed over their stony forms. As work continued in the hall around them, the statues gazed down intently on the scene unfurling beneath them: three Lords Appellant prostrated on the polished Purbeck marble floor, their heads at the King’s feet.

The King’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, the Earl of Arundel and the Earl of Warwick had rebelled against him and instigated a coup to remove his most loyal and trusted advisors, including his beloved friend Robert de Vere. It was November and a cold wind whistled outside the gaping windows of Westminster Hall. Richard stifled his violent temper and reluctantly agreed to hear the lords’ terms. Although they bowed deferentially to the King, they also controlled 300 horsemen who circled Westminster in support of their uprising. Richard had little choice other than to listen, squirming on his high throne and carrying his sceptre, ensconced in fine ermine and velvet robes.

Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick did not address the King themselves but were represented by Sir Richard Scrope, who had been sent to parley with the lords three days before, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Winchester and Ely and the knights John Cobham and John Devereux. The lords had gained a dangerously large following and even mustered an armed retinue at Hornsey Park, north of London. With the threat of a noble uprising, Richard was forced into talks and sent an invitation for a meeting at Westminster Hall.¹

Richard was accompanied by his usual loyal favourites – the friends and advisors who were the focus of the lords’ contention – including Robert de Vere, Mayor Nicholas Brembre and Richard’s former tutor Simon Burley. Lord Scrope announced that the lords had ‘appealed of treason’ against ‘both King and Kingdom’. The men specifically accused were the Archbishop of York, the Earl of Suffolk, Robert Tresilian – the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench – and Robert de Vere. All were requested to answer for their crimes and, begrudgingly, Richard agreed to the petition, setting a date for the next Parliament to formalise an impeachment process.

Almost as soon as John of Gaunt set sail from Plymouth to claim the Castilian throne in 1386, bubbling political tension in England had risen to the fore. Richard, at twenty, had grown closer to a cluster of noblemen headed by Robert de Vere (now Duke of Ireland) and became ever more hostile to those critical of his friends – particularly Gaunt’s youngest brother the Duke of Gloucester. Gloucester had an uncomfortable relationship with his difficult nephew, and, of all the royal uncles, trod a fine line between treason and scrutiny. In a particularly tense moment, Gloucester responded to a bout of Richard’s petulance in Parliament by boldly stating: ‘If a King, through any evil counsel, or foolish contumacy or out of scorn, or some singular petulant will of his own, or by any other irregular means, shall alienate himself from his people and shall refuse to be governed and guided by laws of the realm . . . then it shall be lawful . . . to depose that same King from his regal throne, and set up some other of the royal blood in his room’.² By naming an ‘evil counsel’, Gloucester directly attacked de Vere, going as far to suggest another Plantagenet should take Richard’s place.

The hostility between Gloucester and Richard’s close circle came to the fore in 1387 when Robert de Vere, having become too comfortable under the King’s protection, gravely insulted the royal family. De Vere was married to Philippa, the King’s cousin and the daughter of Gaunt’s eldest sister, Isabella, Countess of Bedford, and her French husband, Enguerrand de Coucy. The marriage – for Robert de Vere – was a good one, for it bonded him to the King through a familial alliance, yet he was unsatisfied with his wife and appealed to the Pope in Rome for a divorce, bringing enormous embarrassment to Philippa de Coucy and her royal uncles. The Westminster Chronicle states that the divorce was granted but through ‘false witnesses’, and when de Vere subsequently illicitly married a Bohemian woman from the Queen’s bedchamber named Agnes de Lancercrona, the situation became a ‘scandal’ that ‘shamed and infuriated the royal princes’.³ Thomas Walsingham was not as gracious about the situation. He stated that de Vere was so ‘puffed up by all the honours which the King loaded upon him, promptly reputed his young and beautiful wife’, going on to marry Agnes who he called ‘a saddler’s daughter certainly not noble – and ugly too’.⁴ Robert de Vere’s recklessness in divorcing – possibly illegally – a member of the royal family demonstrates his egotism and the protection and power he believed he enjoyed in John of Gaunt’s absence. Without the mediating presence of the Duke of Lancaster, the Duke of Gloucester staged an intervention.

Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick were the first of five noblemen who would become known as the Lords Appellant.

Soon after the appeal at Westminster, Robert de Vere raised an army, with the support of the King. De Vere had rallied the support of the Constable of Chester, Thomas Molyneux, ‘a wealthy, ambitious man and the whole of that region [Cheshire] waited upon his command’.⁵ An army of 4,000 men from Chester rode overnight to Oxford, where it was intended that they would cross Radcot Bridge over a narrow part of the River Thames. News had reached the Lords Appellant that de Vere was moving towards London with a substantial following and their response was swift. On 12 December Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick were joined by Thomas Mowbray, the Earl of Nottingham, at Huntingdon to formulate a battle plan. The lords were also joined by Henry Bolingbroke, who commanded the Lancastrian men at arms and archers.

It is likely that Henry Bolingbroke – already infuriated by Robert de Vere’s treatment of his cousin Philippa – was responding to the call to arms of his uncle, Gloucester. It is uncertain what instructions John of Gaunt delivered to his son that evening in 1386 as they dined together aboard his ship. But considering Gaunt’s determination to oversee Richard’s kingship, promise to his brother and consistent demonstration of loyalty to the Crown, it is certain that Gaunt would have stopped Bolingbroke from taking up arms against Robert de Vere. It was this decision to stand against the King’s friend – and by proxy, the King – at Radcot Bridge, teetering dangerously close to treason, that laid the foundations of Richard’s future distrust of his cousin.

Frost blanketed the ground beneath the feet of Henry Bolingbroke as he waited at the foot of Radcot Bridge on 19 December for Robert de Vere’s army to arrive. As the Duke of Ireland approached the narrow pass with his men, it became clear he was unable to cross as intended without a fight. According to Henry Knighton – who was given an eyewitness account – de Vere raised the King’s standard ‘which he had there all ready to be unfurled’ and prepared for engagement.⁶ He rode on, intending to cross the bridge to where Bolingbroke waited with his army, only to find that Bolingbroke’s men had torn up the paving stones, leaving the bridge impossible to cross. As soon as Robert de Vere realised he had been trapped, Gloucester and his army moved in. The Duke of Ireland, too afraid to fight, embarrassingly stripped off his gauntlets and hurled himself into the River Thames, swimming to safety. He managed to escape capture and possible death, but his ally Thomas Molyneux met a brutal end, for the Constable of Cheshire found himself trapped.

Stood beneath the bridge, having attempted to escape downriver, he was given an ultimatum: die in the water, or die fighting. Gloucester and Bolingbroke’s men closed in around the bridge and the helpless Molyneux was accosted by Sir Thomas Mortimer, who ‘urged him to climb out or without doubt he would pierce him with arrows’. Thomas Walsingham accounts for the exchange between the two men: ‘If I climb out’, said Thomas, ‘will you spare my life?’ to which Mortimer replied, ‘I’m making no promises . . . but you must either climb out or else soon be killed’. Bravely, Molyneux requested ‘if that is so, permit me to climb out so that I can fight with you or one of your men so that I can die like a man’. However, as the Constable emerged from the water, Mortimer grabbed him by his helmet and, pulling it off his head, ‘drew his dagger and split his brain’.⁷

Having successfully defeated Robert de Vere at Radcot Bridge, the Duke of Gloucester and Henry Bolingbroke searched his wagons and found letters from Richard – he had ordered de Vere to assemble an army.

The lords’ appeal at Westminster had been peaceful, yet Richard responded with tyranny. The King’s actions were unnervingly reminiscent of Edward II and his war against the nobility who questioned his judgement and his chosen favourites.

The King spent a dismal Christmas in the Tower of London where he was confronted by the Lords Appellant for raising an army against them. During the interrogation, he burst into tears. Robert de Vere was now in exile and Richard was forced to face the inevitable impeachment of his favourite councillors. In the bloodiest and most dramatic Parliament of his reign, the ‘Merciless Parliament’ which took place in early February, the five Lords Appellant⁸ – Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick, Mowbray and Bolingbroke – condemned two of Richard’s advisors to a brutal death by hanging, drawing and quartering and the other three to exile. Those who met the executioner were Nicholas Brembre, an adversary of John of Gaunt and former Mayor of London, and Simon Burley, Richard’s boyhood tutor – who eventually avoided bloody quartering and was beheaded. Robert de Vere, Michael de la Pole and the Archbishop of York were permanently exiled. This outcome was crushing for Richard. He was left powerless without the zealous de Vere to direct his interests, but most importantly, without Simon Burley. For Richard, Burley’s execution was the most distressing outcome of the Merciless Parliament. Simon Burley had practically raised him and cared for Richard as a young boy and young King: it was he who had tenderly carried the exhausted ten-year-old to bed on the night of his coronation. Richard’s sadness over Burley’s execution was acknowledged by John of Gaunt four years later. Empathetic for Richard’s loss – and perhaps to mitigate the tension between the King and the lords – Gaunt contributed the generous sum of ten pounds to the cost of Burley’s tomb.⁹

Grieving for his friends, Richard was forced to swear that from now on he would obey the law and not adhere to ‘flatterers’ but to ‘Parliament and the Lords’.¹⁰ The rising was over and the lords had won; however, it was clear that the events of these two years – the years that Gaunt was away in Spain – were imprinted on Richard’s consciousness, for ‘he always felt these things very deeply, and the Lords said about themselves that all three should never gather in his presence at the same time’. The England that John of Gaunt returned to the following year was permeated with Richard’s dormant rage.

 

After three years abroad, John of Gaunt arrived in Plymouth in November 1389, laden with Castilian gold and barrels of Gascon wine – gifts for the King and family who had remained in England. Gaunt had spent the previous year in Bayonne finalising the agreements made at Trancoso until they were eventually ratified in a formal treaty concluded in July 1388. He had endured months of constant, humiliating delays as Juan Trastámara accumulated his immense payoff. In the meantime, from Bayonne, he made efforts to forge an alliance with Castile – even if he could not take the throne of Castile for himself, he was still heavily invested in furthering the interests of the Plantagenet dynasty.

After Gaunt returned to England from Spain, his interests lay wholly in the establishment of peace. His change of heart, from war and conquest to peace and alliance, was initiated at Bayonne where he attempted to create a lasting peace with Castile, but was rejected by Juan Trastámara. Although Gaunt failed to achieve lasting peace in 1388, his vision of a successful alliance was eventually realised in 1467 – the centenary year of the Battle of Najéra.

Returning home with news of a Castilian alliance had been John of Gaunt’s best hope of mitigating the disaster of his campaign. However, the political unrest that hung over England in his absence had turned the spotlight away from the Duke of Lancaster. After Gaunt disembarked, he made his way to a council at Reading where he would face Richard and take on his new royal and political position of peacemaker.

John of Gaunt approached Reading in the first week of December.¹¹ He had travelled from Plymouth, through the changing wintery landscape of England; a stark contrast to the heat and dust he had endured in Spain. Before he could reach the town, the King’s men rode out to meet him and Gaunt was surprised to find Richard amongst them, for his very presence extended Gaunt a great honour. Uncle and nephew embraced warmly and an uncharacteristically pleasant Richard escorted Gaunt into Reading where, at the council, he showered him with flattery. The King intended to demonstrate to Gaunt that his influence was – for the first time – appreciated, having spent Gaunt’s absence at constant loggerheads with his conspiring uncle, Gloucester. The Duke of Lancaster’s return to England turned out to be an elaborate affair. He arrived at Westminster to find Londoners – who had formerly closed the City gates to him – welcoming and gracious. He was formally received by the mayor and aldermen, and was awarded a ceremonial procession into the Abbey accompanied by chanting.

Remarkably, Gaunt had returned to find himself in a position of increased influence. Richard needed his skilful diplomacy and smooth politics, particularly as a new round of negotiations with France came to the fore. Despite his previous enthusiasm for extending the window for war with France, John of Gaunt was tired of fighting and returned to England intent on peace. With his youngest daughter, Catherine of Lancaster, in Spain as its future Queen, war with France – Castile’s ally – would jeopardise her position, as well as Gaunt’s Spanish income that had only recently been ratified. It was not long before Richard dispatched Gaunt, along with the reluctant Duke of Gloucester, to negotiate new terms for a truce between England and France, which was agreed at Leulingham, a town near Calais, in June 1389. This was to last three years, with the intention of then drawing up terms for a lasting peace.

In the interests of such peace, nearing the end of Parliament, Richard made Gaunt Duke of Aquitaine in March 1390.¹² Aquitaine was a historically contentious territory; the French would not allow England to rule it exclusively – without acknowledging the French King as a feudal overlord – and the English refused to do so as their government would then be subjugated to the French. The territorial situation, that had been a relatively simple problem during war, proved a nightmare when brokering peace. In 1390, another option was considered: that Gaunt rule Aquitaine as an independent English lord, but be expected to give homage to the King of France. Richard and the English government would therefore be independent from French rule.

Having been away so long, Gaunt briefly visited Aquitaine to oversee its administration.¹³ However, his main focus was touring his estates at home and settling himself back into court politics. He also eagerly dedicated time to his only legitimate son, Henry Bolingbroke, particularly in overseeing his future security; Gaunt clearly suspected that Bolingbroke’s part in the Lords Appellant uprising would have consequences.

After Gaunt’s return to England, it was apparent that the Lancastrian lands were his immediate concern and in February – shortly before he was granted Aquitaine – Richard generously bestowed on Gaunt the Duchy of Lancaster as a palatinate entailed on his male heir. This meant that the entire Duchy would be passed to Henry by right, after Gaunt’s death. This boded well for Bolingbroke’s future, but it was unusual for Richard, who harboured animosity against anyone who had previously acted against him. It is possible that he was still unsettled after his feud with the Lords Appellant and knew he needed the powerful support of Gaunt in order to keep his throne. Equally, after Gaunt’s return, Henry Bolingbroke was careful to avoid the King, grateful for his father’s interest in keeping the peace.

Despite John of Gaunt’s recent return and keen interest in his son’s future, Henry Bolingbroke was unsurprisingly eager to leave England himself, to chase adventure overseas – a desire for action and sport that was typical of his character. Henry Bolingbroke certainly cut the figure of a chivalrous knight. He was skilled in the lists – even travelling to St Inglevert in France to learn from the jousting master, Boucicaut, in 1389 – and was a rising star in domestic tournaments. Bolingbroke was also – despite appearances as a Lord Appellant – keen to avoid meddling in domestic politics. During peace, he sought further military opportunity and, in the summer of 1390, John of Gaunt gave his son permission to cut his teeth as a crusader.

On 19 July, Henry Bolingbroke set sail from the port town of Boston in Lincolnshire. His ship was bound for Prussia, which was where the Teutonic Knights waged a holy war against the Lithuanians in order to convert the native Slavic people to Christianity. The Order was formed of loyal warriors drawn to the Teutonic continuation of the early crusades in Jerusalem – the Christianization of non-believers – and in The Knight’s Tale, Chaucer nods to the Order as the most esteemed crusaders in the world, describing his Knight to be fighting alongside its members in ‘Lettow’, now Lithuania. It is possible that Chaucer drew on the notoriety of the Teutonic Knights – who in the later part of the fourteenth century were at the height of their formidable powers – because they controlled a large part of eastern Europe. All of this probably appealed to the intrepid Henry Bolingbroke.

Much like Chaucer’s Knight, some of his contemporaries also went on crusade – with no war to fight in, it was a glamorous opportunity for chivalric and religious virtue. Sir Peter de Bukton, to whom Chaucer had previously dedicated a poem, left England alongside Bolingbroke in 1390.¹⁴ As his friends turned towards knightly ambition and away from a King soured by domestic politics, Chaucer – unlike his Knight – looked inwards, involving himself in his new position as clerk of the King’s works at Westminster Abbey. Like Gaunt, he had no interest in participating in further war.

John of Gaunt was supportive of Bolingbroke’s desire to crusade and funded his son’s travels (which continued into 1392 from Eastern Europe to Jerusalem). Gaunt was also supportive of his son’s companions: when two of Bolingbroke’s men – Sir Thomas Renston and Sir John Clifton – were captured in Lithuania, Gaunt personally bailed them out, beseeching King Vladyslav II of Poland-Lithuania to free them from imprisonment.¹⁵

Whilst his son was involved in warring in Eastern Europe, Gaunt was wholly focused on maintaining peace and spent much of his time poring over possible options. John Gower, a London poet, condemned the continuation of the war with France as a vain pursuit in a long Latin poem, Vox Clamantis, stating: ‘If a King is vain, greedy, and haughty, the land subject to him suffers’. Christine de Pisan, who lived and worked out of the French court, counselled the Dauphin, Louis, Duke of Guyenne – the son of Charles VI – against conflict in her Book of Peace: ‘Troy, Rome and others that I leave out for brevity, which were once so powerful that the whole world in concert could do them no harm – but they were undone by discord’. Following Gaunt’s return to England, he was seemingly deterred from such discord; it seems likely that the failure of the Castilian campaign had a similar, but more lasting, effect on Gaunt as the Peasants’ Revolt. Having experienced the trauma of losing so many men in Spain, failing at his greatest ambition, and suffering possible depression, Gaunt chose to adopt a peaceful and more pious perspective on the world. This would echo the traditionally pacifist ideals of Lollardy, Wycliffe’s movement that had previously inspired him. In 1391, whilst in hiding following charges of heresy, the Lollard preacher William Swinderby wrote to the Bishop of Hereford, attacking Catholic doctrine by stating: ‘Christ’s law bids us to love our enemies, the Pope’s law gives us leave to hate and kill them’.

Gaunt’s desire for peace was also reflective of the general mood of England’s nobility at the end of the fourteenth century. Even Chaucer, who had fought in France, remembered the ugly side of war when he wrote in the Tale of Melibee ‘Lordynges’, quod he, ‘ther is ful many a man that crieth “Werre, werre!” that woot ful litel what werre amounteth . . . that shal sterve yong by cause of thilke werre, or elles lyve in sorwe and dye in wrecchednesse’. Certainly those who were aware of what war ‘amounteth’ to wished not to live in ‘sorwe’ and die in ‘wrecchednesse’. Even the mercenary warrior Sir Robert Knolles, who had fought on campaign with Gaunt and spent a lifetime at war, ended his life in pious contemplation. In a period where war was often a part of life, there was an inevitable paradox between sin (during war) and penitence. Crusades, indulgences, benefactions and prayer were all efforts to mitigate sins committed in one’s lifetime. It was, perhaps, a natural course to reach a penitential phase of life.

Whilst final proposals for peace were being considered in England, the French covertly planned an invasion of Italy. Charles VI, having recently supported his cousin, Louis of Anjou, to succeed the throne of Naples, hatched a master plot to invade Italy from the south, with the support of the Pope in Avignon. This was an extraordinary problem for the English, who could not allow their relationship with Italy – and indeed, the Papacy – to come under the control of the French whilst peace was still highly precarious. Equally, the French were hamstrung in peace talks with the English. With such historic rivalry between the two countries, Charles VI would never leave France undefended whilst waging war in Italy. With such a complex political stalemate, the situation required a creative and more intimate style of diplomacy.

 

In spring 1390, Richard dispatched heralds throughout ‘England, Scotland, Germany, Flanders and France’, inviting  the finest nobility of Europe to participate in a tournament. Sir William de Hainault, Count d’Ostrevant, ‘engaged many knights and squires to accompany him’ and Waleran de Luxembourg, the Count of Saint Pol – a French noble – assembled knights and squires to accompany him to England. When the invitation to the tournament at Smithfield arrived at the French court, the Count of Saint Pol was nominated as the natural contender. Not only was he already involved in peace talks with the English, but he was also a famous jouster. His trip to England also became a diplomatic mission on behalf of Charles VI; he was charged with delivering a letter to Richard, suggesting a meeting between the two Kings near Calais.¹⁶ The tournament was, above all, an opportunity for European nobility to peacock against one another in the guise of diplomacy.

At around three o’clock on 10 October 1390, there was a deafening clattering of hooves within the courtyard of the Tower of London as a team of sixty warhorses stamped nervously, waiting for the heavy gates to open. Onlookers watched and waited for an inevitable spectacle as trumpeters sounded and flags were raised. The horses ‘ornamented for the tournament’ were ridden out of the Tower by squires, followed by ‘sixty high ranking ladies, mounted on palfreys [a ladies’ saddle horse], most elegantly and richly dressed, each leading by a silver chain, a knight armed for tilting’.¹⁷ The theatrical procession moved towards Smithfield, where the King had organised the largest social spectacle of his entire reign.

Celebrations began with a feast, hosted at the Bishop of London’s palace – a grand building near St Paul’s church. Nobility from across Europe were received at the first feast by King Richard and Queen Anne. In a shrewd diplomatic move, the Count of Saint Pol was given the great honour of judging the prize for the challengers, for he was regarded as ‘the best knight at this tournament’ and the Earl of Huntingdon, John Holland, as the defenders’ judge (the home team). This was meant to represent the historic rivalry between France and England, played out in a tournament setting.

Despite the political undertones of the occasion, the jousts were a success. Richard behaved like a King, enjoying the attention, finery and theatre of the tournament, and knights jousted into the evening. The Count of Saint Pol ‘eclipsed all who tilted’ and those who took part were ‘courageous’, despite many being unhorsed or losing their helmets in the dramatic clash of lance and armour. According to the Westminster Chronicle, Richard also participated in the jousting on the first day of the tournament and was awarded a prize.¹⁸ The nights were spent feasting and dancing, with guests lavishly entertained by fine food laced with spices – pepper, cardamom and cloves – and minstrels who played into the small hours. On Friday, the penultimate night of the tournament, John of Gaunt hosted the grand finale. Given his experience of tournaments – a regular feature at the court of Edward III – along with his knack for politics and expert diplomatic skills, it seems plausible that John of Gaunt was the brains behind the success of the event. After the Smithfield tournament, the stalemate was resolved; the French – who could not defeat the English just as the English could not defeat the French – abandoned all plans for their invasion of Italy, paving the way for promising talks at Calais.

The sudden change of heart on the part of the French King was probably due to the astute Thomas Percy, who was sent to Paris to contest the planned invasion. As Percy was John of Gaunt’s man and had loyally served him through the disastrous campaign in Castile, it is likely that his mission to Paris had come at Gaunt’s request. It is unsurprising then, that when the time came for the meeting on the march of Calais, it was the Duke of Lancaster who represented the King, rather than Richard attending himself, despite the French King’s personal request. Gaunt was now a consistent advocate for peace; however, the lords in Parliament had to agree to the final settlement – and many were sceptical of the French terms, including the Duke of Gloucester, who argued for a continuation of war.

A Great Council was held at Reading in 1391, during which Richard expressed his desire to ‘see the King of France and have conversations with him about the means of establishing a definitive peace between them’.¹⁹ This course of action was delayed and picked up again at Westminster, where the lords were concerned about the meeting with Charles VI. Questions were floated; would he come with ‘an armed force’ or in ‘peace time fashion, in company with a few knights’? As Richard planned to negotiate with the French King with only a few advisors at his side, the lords considered the size of each retinue an important matter.

Thomas Percy was one of four envoys who were batted back and forth across the Channel in an attempt to broker a suitable meeting place, time and party size, all at enormous cost. Richard – ever the aesthete – funnelled money into suitably accoutring his royal party  and himself for the encounter with Charles VI, yet the meeting never went ahead. As the period of truce was drawing to a close and the proposed conference date approaching, a raucous council was held at Westminster with Richard and all three of his uncles present. Over five days, the lords shouted over one another demanding aggressive terms for the peace treaty, with the Duke of Gloucester leading the charge, arguing his case against a lasting peace with the old enemy. Eventually it was decided that John of Gaunt would travel in place of Richard,  who was the trump card in negotiations, to Amiens, seventy miles north of Paris, where a peace conference was arranged for March. The English requirements for peace were the return of all land in France allocated to the English at Brétigny – except Ponthieu – and the outstanding balance of John II’s ransom which, all these years later, was in serious arrears.

John of Gaunt was getting old. Now fifty-one, constant trips across the Channel had doubtless taken their toll. However, duty-bound, he set off from the port of London on board the Seinte Marie of Calais to France where he would act diplomatically and regally, with only seventeen days to negotiate a peace.²⁰ As Gaunt arrived at the gates of Amiens, accompanied by the Dukes of Berry, Burgundy and Bourbon, he insisted on paying his respects to Charles VI before settling in to his fine lodgings. Gaunt and his men – his brother Edmund, Duke of York, John Holland and the Bishop of Durham, Walter Skirlaw, who was a retired diplomat, all visited the French King shortly after their arrival still dressed in their travelling clothes. The finest nobility of the French court peered at Gaunt and his companions as they stamped through the Bishop’s palace for an audience with the King, ill-attired for a royal meeting. Nonetheless, Gaunt knew how to provide a show and knelt before Charles VI three times as a matter of chivalry and great courtesy.

Despite the pomp, ceremony and expense of the conference, its only outcome was an extension of the truce to 29 September 1393. John of Gaunt returned to England having achieved little, for the only option again proposed was that he hold Aquitaine as part of the French crown. This was a suggestion that the Gascon nobility would never entertain, for Aquitaine had always been held by the English King, or his heir. Even if an agreement could have been reached, the health of Charles VI led to further postponement of any decisions on the matter.

On a boiling hot August day in 1393, Charles VI left Le Mans where he had been attending a multitude of councils. Whilst at Le Mans, the King had become unwell. He was not eating or drinking, and became afflicted with a fever and a fluctuating temperature almost daily. The King was travelling to Brittany with members of his court and the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy, who rode confidently ahead. Under the midday sun the King’s horse was sweating and the sand underfoot felt hot to the touch. It was ‘the hottest day that had ever been known’ and the King was sweltering under a ‘black velvet jerkin’.²¹ As they were riding, a loud noise – the dropping of a lance – caused Charles to jump in fright which immediately sent him into a panicked frenzy. Charles drew and brandished his sword, attacking anyone in his proximity, shouting ‘Attack! Attack the traitors!’ Eventually, the King was restrained – having already injured some of the travelling party – and his three uncles and brother rushed to his side; however, ‘he had lost all recollection of them and gave no sign of affection or recognition. His eyes were rolling very strangely, nor did he speak to anyone’.²² This episode of nonsensical fury was the first occasion of the madness of Charles VI, which would threaten the stability of France into the next century.

Peace talks with France inevitably abated with the King’s illness, and the domestic focus turned to Gaunt’s potential – and unpopular – position in Aquitaine, which had become public knowledge. Meanwhile, in the early summer of 1393, Henry Bolingbroke’s ship landed at Dover. He had returned from his crusades in Prussia and Jerusalem.

Henry Bolingbroke by now had distinguished himself amongst the nobility of England. He had a wife, Mary de Bohun, and four sons and a daughter, including the future Henry V.²³ Mary de Bohun was the child of a wealthy landowner, Humphrey de Bohun, a great patron of the arts and in particular of illuminated manuscripts. Humphrey de Bohun even patronised a manuscript workshop in Essex where some of the most intricate and beautiful illuminations made in England in the fourteenth century were produced. One stunning illuminated psalter depicts the arms of Bohun and Lancaster intertwining, referencing the union of two great houses on the marriage between Henry and Mary, which had been carefully arranged by John of Gaunt.

The Duke of Gloucester was married to Mary’s elder sister, Eleanor, but it was Gaunt who personally saw to Mary’s welfare until she was old enough to be a wife to his son. Henry Bolingbroke and Mary de Bohun were married at Arundel Castle in February 1381, when Henry was thirteen and Mary eleven. The marriage – like most elite marriages of the period – was purely contractual, a political union between powerful families. Despite Henry’s already vast Lancastrian inheritance, his marriage was also lucrative, echoing Gaunt’s first marriage to heiress Blanche. Bolingbroke was close to his siblings, including his illegitimate half-siblings, particularly Thomas Beaufort. It is likely that the Christmas of 1393, held at Hertford Castle, was a joyful one; Gaunt was with his family, and his sons Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Beaufort arranged a joust to celebrate the festivities. Mary de Bohun was also pregnant with her sixth child. But as the House of Lancaster looked forward to the promise of new life in the following year, it was met with a series of tragic deaths.

At the end of March 1394, Constance of Castile, Duchess of Lancaster, was administered the last rites, surrounded by her loyal ladies in waiting. It is likely that she fell sick and deteriorated swiftly, as Gaunt was absent in France on the King’s business, and would have dutifully returned to his Duchess’s side had he known of her illness in time.

Gaunt gave his wife a magnificent funeral that July, and she was buried at Newark in Leicester. Constance’s final resting place was far from Gaunt’s future tomb, planned at St Paul’s Cathedral; the separation between them that had existed for the duration of their loveless marriage had become an eternal one. Where Gaunt seemed pragmatic about the death of his wife, he was certainly saddened when his young daughter-in-law Mary, whom he had keenly protected, died giving birth to her sixth child, a girl named Philippa. Mary died at only twenty-five, leaving her children motherless, much as her mother-in-law Blanche, at a similar age, had left Henry and his sisters. Mary’s children did not forget her and she appears to have remained in the heart of her son, Henry V, who, soon after becoming King, commissioned a copper effigy of his late mother to lie over her tomb and immortalise her likeness for the ages.

Almost two years after the death of Constance, the King granted John of Gaunt leave from court and from Westminster. He left immediately and rode hard for Lincoln, where on 13 January 1396 he married his long-term mistress Katherine Swynford. After the couple’s separation in 1381, and Gaunt’s period in Spain, their relationship had endured although – judging by the lack of any further children during this time – it was probably not sexual again until their marriage. On 14 February 1382 – the first Valentine’s Day after the Peasants’ Revolt and their separation – John of Gaunt had granted Katherine full ownership of the property she inhabited. This was a sign of the love and respect that endured for the fifteen years until they were finally able to marry. The wedding between John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford caused as much controversy as their infidelity had. John of Gaunt took his new Duchess north, to tour his estates where they stayed at Pontefract and Rothwell – likely to avoid court gossip. This was the same journey that Gaunt had made with Blanche in the months after their wedding, so it is possible that he was repeating the process with Katherine as a way of formally presenting the new Duchess of Lancaster to her people. It is also likely that John of Gaunt was eager to delay her reception at court, which proved to be as cold and unwelcoming as predicted. According to Froissart, who visited England a year after the marriage, high-born ladies of the court, such as Eleanor de Bohun, the Duke of Gloucester’s wife, and the Countess of Arundel snubbed Katherine, stating that Gaunt had ‘disgraced himself by thus marrying his concubine’; in truth they were more appalled by her low birth than her morals. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester allegedly considered Gaunt to be a ‘doating fool’ whilst Froissart comments on Katherine’s ‘base extraction compared to his two former duchesses’ and seems unable to grasp the concept of a love match. The only practical reason for the marriage – he concluded – was because ‘the Duke fondly loved the children he had by her’. As Gaunt aged, he became keen to settle his personal matters honourably, so it’s likely that a leading motive for the marriage was to eventually legitimise the Beaufort children, whom he publicly acknowledged and provided for. But in marrying Katherine Swynford, it appears that John of Gaunt was committed to consolidating his affection for his long-term mistress, at the risk of public affront.

A year after Gaunt and Katherine were married, he approached the King about the legitimisation of their four children, John, Henry, Thomas and Joan. Richard accepted his request and it was eventually granted by Pope Boniface IX. However, Richard was sullen and subdued, and received his uncle ‘without love’, for he was consumed with grief and anger over his own recent loss: that of his beloved Queen, Anne of Bohemia.

At only twenty-eight, shortly after the deaths of Constance and Mary de Bohun, Queen Anne died at Sheen. In his grief, Richard began to attack those around him in fits and furious outbursts, most publicly at Anne’s elaborate funeral in Westminster Abbey. At the beginning of proceedings – according to Thomas Walsingham – Richard became irritated with the Earl of Arundel, for ‘some trivial reason’. Snatching the cane of his attendant, Richard beat the Earl over the head which such force that Arundel collapsed, ‘spreading blood all over the pavement’. The funeral had to be delayed whilst the priests forced a reconciliation. It was nightfall before the service ended and Anne was finally interred.

One year after Anne’s death, Richard sent a payment of over £2,000 to masons, bricklayers, craftsmen and labourers, directed by John Gedney, the clerk of the King’s works, to pull down and raze to the ground ‘all the houses and buildings of the manor of Sheen’.²⁴ He intended to destroy the building that he had shared with his beloved wife, where Anne had drawn her final breath. As Sheen was torn apart, Richard sank into a continued period of violent and tyrannical behaviour pre-empting his final downfall. Those around him became vulnerable to his whims, and John of Gaunt was unable to exercise the same influence that had previously cooled Richard’s fury.

Since his return from Spain, Gaunt had worked tirelessly on the King’s behalf as a peacemaker. He managed to calm Richard’s temper in domestic politics and steer him towards a peaceful outcome with France, paving the way for a peaceful reign following Gaunt’s death. In doing so, he had also secured a stable inheritance for his eldest son and the legitimacy of his Beaufort children.

John of Gaunt had carefully and meticulously been laying the groundwork for the dynasty that would follow him, protecting its interests and the interests of the country. The death of Queen Anne unleashed a tyranny in Richard that his uncle had been careful to avoid, as if treading softly over a pane of glass. The despotism of Richard II would swallow the final years of Gaunt’s life and throw the future of the country into peril.